EA Releases Disappointing Second Madness Returns Trailer

Wonderland was packed full of danger, even before Alice went nuts, but fiery tentacle beasts? That's something new.

A new trailer for Alice: Madness Returns, the upcoming sequel to 2000's American McGee's Alice, seems to suggest that the nightmarish visions that plagued Alice as she lay comatose in the first game, are spilling out into her waking hours as well.

We see Alice walking the streets of London, where a colorful diorama depicting a familiar tea party catches her eye. She sees a reflection in the glass and turns to look, only to have a terrible creature erupt from the diorama and drag her inside. The trailer ends with a ragged voice asking what Alice had done, suggesting that all this weirdness is somehow Alice's fault.

As trailers go, it's not bad, but you'd be hard pressed to make the argument that it was anywhere near as creepy as the first, which ends with Alice opening her mouth to speak and nothing but blood and teeth pouring out. If insanity is going to be a prominent theme in Madness Returns, it's going to have to crank up the atmosphere, and tentacles don't really cut it anymore.

Alice: Madness Returns is being developed by Shanghai-based Spicy Horse Studios, and will be released for Xbox 360, PC and PlayStation 3 sometime next year.